As America rejects Christianity, what will replace it?

A day before Easter Sunday your preznit--Porridgebrain--issued a proclamation:  He proclaimed that the day most of us revere as the day of Christ's ressurection  as "Transgender Day of Visibility."  (The preznit left the pro-forma Easter proclamation for two days later.)

A handful of people found this...offputting--but the White House told them this was perfectly, utterly reasonable.

If you look around you it’s hard to avoid the realization that something is very wrong in America.  And not just our economy or the border or rampant crime in our cities that's horribly wrong.  Those are just symptoms of the real cause.

Today the entire Mainstream Media and every leader of one of the nation's two main political parties not only insist that men can become women, and vice-versa, and that even children can consent to what the Democrats euphemistically call “gender-affirming care,” they demand that you agree with them.

Many Democratic lawmakers are demanding laws that will force parents to affirm whatever their child claims is xir “gender identity.”  And worse: they're demanding that the government remove the child from the home if the parents refuse.  The liberals who totally run Washington State actually passed such a law, and national Democrats aren't far behind.

After Hamas terrorists filmed themselves raping and murdering Israeli women on Oct. 7, boasting about their savagery to a watching world, hundreds of thousands of American leftists--including many college--still can't bring themselves to condemn Hamas.

Clear corruption of the president--taking obvious multi-million-dollar bribes from China and other foreign nations, as shown by bank wire transfers--elicit coy smirks from Democrats--who would be screaming if a Republican president did the exact same thing.

The common thread to the above (and much more) is that America's "elites" have been slowly rejecting the principles of Christianity, replacing those principles with a worldview that rejects transcendent moral truth.  Instead, today's "elites" and "leaders" tacitly believe  truth is relative.  The totally intended result is that anything is permitted--if you're a member of the elite.

The idea of "fundamental rights," extended to all humans, isn't one that occurred even to advanced ancient societies.  Ancient Greece and Rome had amazing cities and civilizations and structures, but (as far as I know, at least) the idea of fundamental rights for everyone never surfaced.  

Christianity introduced some truly revolutionary ideas: Love your neighbor as yourself.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Forgive.  

If you want an eye-opening experience, go to your local mall with a microphone and a friend with a videocam, and ask teenagers what the Golden Rule is.  All of us old folks knew it by age ten or so.  No longer.

Another interview experience:  Ask how many Americans believe "rights come from the government."  Almost every adult Democrat believes this.  But is it true?

Clearly, rights do NOT come from government, because without any unbreakable principles to rule 'em, governments do whatever makes the ruling politicians and bureaucrats more powerful and richer.  Doing the right thing for the citizens never enters the equation.

Some have posited that the total lack of morals we see everywhere today is due to the rejection of Christianity, which offered a revolutionary set of principles that defined morality.  Our leaders have rejected those principles and substituted double-standards and "the fix."

If that's true--as it seems to be--what does that mean for the future?  

It means the end of America as we know it, because without the universal, defining principles, nothing remains to constrain evil, power-mad humans.

If you want a glimpse of that future, look at any of our big Dem-run city, where killers and muggers are released by corrupt politicians hours after being arrested, without posting bail, because the pols want more votes, and they know huge chunks of voters love quick, no-bail release.
 
Our nation was founded on unprecedented ideals, but the Founders openly admitted that making the experiment work would require moral people--as an overwhelming majority of Christians are.  The Founders knew that power-mad people would always try to control things, so that even after being shown the concept of fundamental rights, the country could only survive if the people were moral.

And in America today, far too many people clearly are NOT moral.

As Christianity fades in America, our system of government, our once-civil society, will unravel--which is exactly what we see happening all around us.  And gradually all our rights and freedoms will follow--and they are.

When people have had something since they were born, they naturally believe life has always been that way.  People who don't know history--that's almost everyone--believe fundamental human rights come from government.  If that's true there would be no reason to be concerned that Christianity is vanishing, eh?

Try telling a Democrat that the huge benefits of Western civilization depend on Christian principles and they'll laugh.  And you know it's true.

The original source of liberalism was Christian principles.  But as time passed liberals forgot that, and slowly rejected that faith.  Cuz they're smaht, see?  Just ask 'em.  You see this in the comments of Democrat websites: "We don't need to believe in your almighty sky-friend."  

If you doubt this, watch man-on-the-street interviews where the interviewer asks 20-somethings "Where do human rights come from?"  The answer is always either "government" or "the U.N."

But without Christianity, how long will the Christian principles last before America reverts to an older form of civilization, one in which only power matters?  Here in the third decade of the 21st century we're beginning to see that happening.

A godless culture prizes money, power and success in those fields.  So-called "sophisticates" see moral relativism--which is another term for double-standards--not as a fatal character flaw but as a sign of sophistication.  "A higher understanding."   But under moral relativism power alone determines what the society believes is right.

The principles Americans have always asserted against tyranny--whether political or moral—freedom of speech, equal protection under the law, government by consent of the governed —sprang from Christianity.  Thus the waning of that faith will cause the core principles on which we have all depended for our frankly magnificent lives to fade.

That process has been underway in the U.S. since around 1960.  Of course it was almost impossible to recognize at the time because it was so gradual.

The new society will be marked by by daily violence: random murders on the streets, for no reason.  Drive-by shootings killing innocent victims--an occurrence now so frequent that few people even notice.  Oppressive taxation, foreclosure of the homes of elderly widows for failure to pay the last six dollars of a tax bill.  (It's already happened.)

Judges taking children away from their parents because the parents refused to call the child by a new, petulant, power-driven name.  (Again, already happened.)

Elderly women randomly attacked on the sidewalks of our big cities by far stronger males--the attacker caught but immediately released to do it the next day.  (Again, already happening.)

You see it in the big, Democrat-ruled cities every single day.  It's become so common that no one even says anything anymore.  

Tranny shooters kill six--including three 9-year-old kids--and the only thing the media wails about is "gun violence."  Biden's FBI refuses to release the "manifesto" explaining the murderer's motive, because the biden regime doesn't want to lose votes from the tranny mafia.  And the Mainstream Media--once bent on ferreting out the truth, but now given to supporting the regime--just shrugs.

Violence against the helpless, with the killer protected by the government--to win a few more votes.  How utterly, brazenly corrupt!  In post-Christian America such violence is quietly protected by the government and used for political advantage.  

The never-stated principle is already known, though never spoken: "There are no absolute truths, so everything is permitted.  That never-explicitly-stated truism will produce--as it always has--a world in which all that matters is power.

How did our school boards get to the point of quietly ordering "counselors" and staff to encourage children to "transition" while keeping this secret from the parents?  And it's telling that often no one knows (or more likely, is willing to say) who actually gave the order.  "Uh...we don't know."

People in constant pain, with no cure, shouldn't be prevented from ending their own suffering.  But obviously that's radically different from a corrupt government urging sick or elderly citizens to kill themselves.  Yet the supposedly sophisticated Canadian government is doing just that--and hardly anyone has batted an eye.

Debauched adults encourage ten-year-old kids in lingerie to dance suggestively.  Does anyone think this is right?  Moral?  Do ya think the Founders ever imagined this?  Do ya think Americans in 1940 would have put up with it?  Yet today it's common.  Democrat mayors fight to protect those events.  Liberals cunningly call pedophiles "minor-attracted persons."

All the things listed above are clear signs of a society that's rejected most of its moral foundations.

Whatever replaces our Founders' principles--founded on Christianity--may claim to be secular humanism, but will be divorced from the Christian principles that made humanism possible.  It will be replaced by power and violence--some by the gangs that infest us now, but some will be official, carried out by government bureaucrats, like 81,000 armed IRS "officers," and regular police.

Opponents are already raided and jailed on bogus charges, parents killed by SWAT teams for refusing to hand their children over to the government to be "transitioned."

Look at the symptoms: the deliberate denigration of the "nuclear family" by the leaders of the Democrat party and their Media toadies.  Daily violence, and the casual, almost smirking tolerance of high-level corruption.  But because the decline is gradual, no one notices.

Liberals and Democrats will sneer that we never really needed Christianity, that "enlightenment" can be found in every society, sparked by any number of things.  Thus they claim the end of Christianity--the source of our great guiding principles--means nothing.  After all, they sneer, don't all religions have great principles?

Okay, I'll play: Name one nation governed by another religion that has the founding principles of the U.S.  Even "progressive" American Jews are opposed to Israel.  China?  You're kidding.  Islam?  Even worse.

There's a way out, but no Christian will even entertain the idea.  So the good people--the moral people--will continue to sit like passengers on a doomed jetliner, waiting for the end.  

Who will say "Let's roll"?

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  adapted from John Daniel Davidson
  in The Federalist  March 27, 2024